The Traces of You
by forgetcanon
Summary: Bastila wears her jacket. Accompanies "Alone in the Dark."


Bastila took a short look around her quarters when Carth holoed her.

Vasha had managed to leave behind a surprising amount. She had only had a year to accumulate what others had a lifetime for. On top of that, she split her time between Bastila's quarters on Coruscant, Carth's home, and her own various apartments. Bastila was halfway convinced that Vasha cleaned out the Ebon Hawk and scattered what she could not take with her between her various former crewmates.

"I have some things," Bastila said. "Mostly her clothes. Some other things."

Carth smiled slightly. He looked just as worn as she felt. "Well, if you need a place to store them until she gets back..."

Bastila hesitated. "Let me think about it."

Carth's duties brought him back to Coruscant later that month, where he purchased a small storage compartment. Apparently Vasha had left him clothes, too, as well as various datapads, tools, small trinkets, an extra toothbrush...

Bastila loaded up her boxes beside his. Mission was going to be along when she could.

"It feels like we're burying her," Bastila murmured quietly.

Carth froze. He set down the box he was moving carefully and leaned on it, head down.

"Yeah," he said. "It does. No matter how much I tell myself that it's just until she gets back..."

"We're not giving up," Bastila cut in.

Carth straightened. "Of course not. Still, how can I expect to get everything done, when I always have to plan for an extra drawer for her things?"

* * *

><p>Bastila didn't tell Carth that she kept Vasha's jacket. Bastila didn't tell Carth that she knew he was keeping some things of his own.<p>

Both of them were private people. Without Vasha there to break them out of their shells, well.

Some things just went unsaid.

* * *

><p>Sometimes, Bastila pulled the jacket out of the closet. Sometimes she slept with it. Sometimes she slipped it on when it was cold. Once or twice, when she desperately needed it, she put it on the hook by the door and let herself pretend that Vasha had just slipped out to the store.<p>

It was a worn thing. A well-used spacer's jacket, made to insulate against the chill of hyperspace and not much more. Bastila pressed it to her nose. It smelled like dead air and the back of Bastila's closet, but also faintly of oil and shampoo.

It had hung in Bastila's closet longer than it had hung on Vasha's shoulders.

* * *

><p>Bastila saw the writing on the wall even before the assassins cornered her outside her apartment. It was why she had been carrying concussion grenades and why she'd hired a droid bodyguard.<p>

The bodyguard didn't survive the encounter, but at least it split their attention. That was all Bastila needed.

Once she finished up outside and patched up her wounds, she rushed inside to grab what she could. Datapad, credits, toothbrush, underwear-

Vasha's jacket.

She threw it on and continued vanishing.

* * *

><p>A month later, she got the chance she'd been waiting for. Carth returned from lunch to find Bastila pacing in his office.<p>

His hug swept her off her feet. Bastila returned it fiercely.

"Don't- don't you _ever_-"

"I'm sorry, I wanted to let you know I was alive-"

It took them some time to calm themselves. They put together a plan to keep her off the radar.

When Bastila pocketed the credits he offered her and put on her pack, he half-smiled. "You know, for a second... With the jacket and all, I thought you were Vasha."

Bastila smiled weakly. "I almost wish I had been."

* * *

><p>She changed her hairstyle. She changed her clothes. She hid her lightsaber and practiced with a blaster. She took on fake name after fake name and picked up tricks to keep them straight in her head.<p>

Once, Vasha had told her stories about living like this, on the run. They'd been lies that Vasha herself made up to fill the gaps the Council had not. At the time Bastila had been alarmed. Now, she was amused.

If only Bastila could remember any details. Then she could berate Vasha when she... came back.

* * *

><p>Bastila didn't know if Carth still believed Vasha was coming back.<p>

Some days, she barely believed it.

* * *

><p>Bastila had never expected to wear the jacket, but she found that she rarely took it off. Vasha had only owned it for a year or so. Bastila wore it for two.<p>

Still, it remained Vasha's jacket.

The day Bastila tore the sleeve on a poorly-placed bolt, she nearly cried. She even risked going to a seamstress to repair it.

The twi'lek glanced up at her over the ratty material. "This? You want me to fix this? Honey, just buy a new jacket."

"I know," Bastila said. "Please, just fix it. It's... It means a lot to me."

* * *

><p>Bastila wondered, in the days following Katarr, if she was still a Jedi. She hadn't practiced with her lightsaber in months. She hadn't communicated with anyone else in the Order for even longer.<p>

And now...

Bastila shuddered.

The Jedi Order had betrayed her once, but she had come back to them. Vasha had convinced her to. But Vasha had never believed in the wisdom of the Council or the Code.

"I don't," she'd said. "But you do, Bastila."

Bastila wondered more and more often if Vasha had just needed a figurehead for the Republic to gather around while she was off playing hero on her own.

* * *

><p>Apparently worn spacer gear was in chic for undercover Jedi.<p>

While Carth quietly gave orders that they were not to be disturbed for any reason and locked his door, Soleria and Bastila looked each other up and down.

"You carry them openly," Bastila said quietly.

Soleria touched the pair of lightsabers at her hip. "Anyone who thinks they can take me deserves the chance to try."

And Bastila could feel it, the echo of power in her.

Soleria had gone against the ravenous hunger on the ship, the one Bastila had barely dared to touch in her Battle Meditation, and she had defeated it with those lightsabers.

And soon, Soleria would leave in the Ebon Hawk, and repair the echo itself.

"If I survive, you're free to the navicomputer's data," Soleria said. "I'll even come with you to hunt her down. But I have no time to waste right now."

Bastila bit the inside of her cheek.

When Soleria left, Bastila furiously began to assemble her lightsaber.

"Self-centered- High and mighty-" she spat.

"Easy," Carth said quietly.

"Do you even care?" Bastila demanded. "She's leaving with our best hope for tracking down Vasha, and-"

"Of course I care," Carth snapped. "If I had the power, I'd tie her down and rip the navicomputer out of her ship while we have the chance, but I don't. All we can do is wait."

"And if she dies?"

Carth had no reply.

* * *

><p>She did not die.<p>

* * *

><p>Soleria was training Jedi.<p>

Misfits, all of them. A former Sith assassin. The sole survivor of Katarr. A bounty hunter who refused to kill. An almost-Jedi who abandoned the Order. The engineer who destroyed a planet. The daughter of an Echani general.

Bastila asked if any of them could even recite the code.

Mical chuckled. "After all these years, do you find any peace in it?"

Bastila closed her eyes. _There is no passion; there is..._

"I do," she said quietly.

When she opened her eyes, Mical was studying her face.

"As do I," he admitted softly. "And with the death of the remains of the Order, it appears that my problems with the Order have taken care of themselves."

It was a horrible thing to say.

Bastila knew exactly what he meant.

* * *

><p>They had barely a moment's rest once they found her. They ran, they fought, they killed, they plotted. Bastila came so close to saving Vasha and just as close to watching her fall. To watching her die.<p>

Bastila fought her way to Vasha's side and spat, "I didn't come this far."

Vasha laughed. "I'll make it up to you."

"How?" Bastila was honestly curious as to what her idiotic, glorious lover could come up with while beating back a wave of dark Jedi.

"I'll think of something." Vasha grunted. "It may take me the rest of my life, though."

"Fair enough." Bastila leapt back into the fray.

* * *

><p>Vasha collapsed on the edge of the bunk Bastila had claimed as her own. Bastila wasn't sure if she could sleep in the same bed as her yet. She wasn't even sure if she was entirely comfortable with undressing in front of her. But Bastila was tired, too, so she shucked her armor piece by piece.<p>

Cheek pressed to the wall, Vasha watched with solemn eyes.

"You kept it," she said quietly.

Bastila wasn't sure how much longer Vasha would manage to stay awake, but she humored her. "Kept what?"

"My jacket."

Bastila glanced at the jacket crumpled on the floor. "I think we can safely say that it's my jacket."

"Nope." Vasha staggered to her feet and snatched the jacket off the deck. "It's mine again."

Bastila glanced at Vasha as she hugged the jacket to her chest. "Somehow, you haven't changed a bit."

Vasha smiled weakly. "No, I have. Give me some time to reveal when I'm desperately pretending and when I'm just being an ass."

* * *

><p>When Vasha finally got the key to the storage space where the rest of her things were kept, she threw out most of her old clothes. "They're out of date," she complained. "They don't fit me anymore, I've gotten too skinny. They're hideous, I don't know what I was thinking when I bought it."<p>

The jacket was one of the only things she kept.

Bastila wasn't sure what Vasha felt when she looked at the jacket. Did she see her own betrayal, four years of pain and grief? Did she see proof that Bastila loved her?

Once, Bastila tried to ask.

Vasha smiled and kissed her cheek. "Accusing me of getting sentimental in my old age? It's a nice jacket. Besides, I've always liked wearing my girlfriends' clothes."


End file.
